The present invention generally relates to the field of error detection and correction, and more particularly to a system and method which characterizes English language words to improve error detection and correction for binary encoded text messages.
Text information encoded into binary bits may be transmitted by both computers and radio links. Such text information may be encoded using a dictionary from which the words used in the message are selected. The dictionary includes a unique code word that is assigned to each word. Messages then are encoded by parsing them into individual words and then transmitting the code word corresponding to that word. When encoded in this fashion, bit errors appear as incorrect words rather than say, incorrect characters as would be the case in a character-based encoding scheme. Since the code words containing errors are decoded into different words, the person reading the decoded message may not be able to detect the error. For example, assume that the code word for the word "green" is "0001," and the code word for the "red" is "0011." An error in the third bit of the code word assigned to the word "green" would result in substitution of the word "red" for "green." In such case, a single bit error could cause the message: "The car is green." to become "The car is red." A human reader may not realize the message contains an error.
A need therefore exists for a coding scheme by which errors in binary encoded text messages could be detected based on the context of the message.